Sending Men To Venus Options

[gndonald]

While it is likely that future Venus missions will be robotic craft, at one point someone in NASA carried out an interesting contingency study on sending a manned craft to orbit Venus.

The file (Click here:Manned Venus Mission 1967) works on the assumption that either the NERVA project had been carried through to completion or that NASA had retained the capacity it was developing for Apollo.

While the author does not rule out the possibility of a landing on Venus, he notes that owing to the unknown surface conditions they would be highly unlikely.

Launch times are given as being between 1975-1986 and are designed to allow 40 days in orbit at Venus.

As someone who was growing up during the period mentioned I would like to say that such missions would have been far more interesting than what actually occurred.

[edstrick]

Note that Venus actually includes environments where a non-spacesuited human can actually go outside. At (I don't have the exact number) about 50 or 55 kilometers altitude, the atmosphere temperature is about 70 F and the pressure is very roughly 1/2 atmosphere. The concentrated sulfuric acid clouds are actually a moderatly thick haze of 2 micrometer droplets with visibility of at least many hundereds of meters to a few kilometers

With a 40% oxygen/nitrogen air supply and goggles, and an acid blocking/neutralizing cream on the skin, and acid-resistant clothing, you could actually work on the outside of a "Buoyant Venus Station" for extended periods.